Art Levine's new piece at Salon raises their election integrity bar quite a bit --- not a difficult task considering where that bar has been lately.

Prior to the 2004 "election", Salon's coverage was generally quite good; since then it's been dismal, thanks mostly to some outrageous smear pieces from Farhad Manjoo. In fact, Salon's coverage has been so dreadful that the site has been referred to in some quarters as "Saloon", which of course rhymes with "buffoon", which gives me a good way to remember "Manjoo", whose name just wouldn't stick in my frozen brain any other way.

If you're not a Salon subscriber, you'll have to watch a short ad to read the whole article. I did; it was well worth the time and effort. But just in case you don't believe me, we have a few short excerpts, below the fold.

Eva Steele has a son in the military who is supposed to be fighting for freedom in Iraq, but sitting in a wheelchair in her room in a Mesa, Ariz., assisted-living facility, she wonders why it's so hard for her to realize a basic freedom back here in America: the right to vote.

Arriving in Arizona in January from Kansas City, weakened by four heart attacks and degenerative disk disease, Steele, 57, discovered that without a birth certificate she can't register to vote. Under a draconian new Arizona law that supposedly targets illegal immigrants, she needs proof of citizenship and a state-issued driver's license or photo I.D. to register. But her van and purse were stolen in the first few weeks after she moved to Mesa, and with her disability checks going to rent and medicine, she can't afford the $15 needed to get her birth certificate from Missouri. Her wheelchair makes it hard for her to navigate the bus routes or the bureaucratic maze required to argue with state bureaucrats. She's unable to overcome the hurdles thrown in her way --- and in the way of as many as 500,000 other Arizona residents --- by the state's Republican politicians.

"I think everybody should have the right to vote, no matter if you've got two nickels or you're a millionaire," Steele says. "I think it's a shame you have to jump through so many hoops to prove that you're the person who you say you are."

But Steele's plight has gotten relatively little notice from pundits and progressive activists confidently predicting a sweeping Democratic victory in November. Opinion polls show that a majority of the public wants a Democratic Congress, but whether potential voters --- black and Latino voters in particular --- will be able to make their voices heard on Election Day is not assured. Across the country, they will have to contend with Republican-sponsored schemes to limit voting. In a series of laws passed since the 2004 elections, Republican legislators and officials have come up with measures to suppress the turnout of traditional Democratic voting blocs. This fall the favored GOP techniques are new photo I.D. laws, the criminalizing of voter registration drives, and database purges that have disqualified up to 40 percent of newly registered voters from voting in such jurisdictions as Los Angeles County.

"The criminalizing of voter registration drives"? How low can they get?

Never mind. Saloon never would have mentioned "the criminalizing of voter registration drives". So we must be making progress.

There is rarely hard proof of the Republicans' real agenda. One of the few public declarations of their intent came in 2004, when then state Rep. John Pappageorge of Michigan, who's now running for a state Senate seat, was quoted by the Detroit Free Press: "If we do not suppress the Detroit [read: black] vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election cycle."

Yes, indeed. A very tough time. All over the country.

Let's have a quick look at a couple of states we don't hear about all that often:

ARIZONA
Thanks to a legacy that includes denying Native Americans the right to vote until 1948 and decades more of scheming to block minority voters (the state still has to submit its voting regulations to the Justice Department for approval), there's a good reason that voting reformers view the state's latest "voting integrity" weapon with skepticism. The sweeping, Republican-backed Proposition 200, passed by voters in 2004 and enacted last year, [...] makes Arizona the only state in the country to require proof of citizenship for voter registration.
...
[S]pokesmen for Arizona secretary of state Janice Brewer, a Republican, praise her for minimizing fraud while "single-handedly" working to increase voter registration. Privately, though, she may hold more disturbing views. A former Republican candidate for the state Legislature, Thom Von Hapsburg of Phoenix, told Salon that he was shocked at a fundraiser when Brewer told him she doesn't want "the wrong kind of people voting."

It seems to me I've heard that song before | It's from an old familiar score | Where is Sammy Kahn when we really need him?

INDIANA
Whether it's thousands of voters purged from county registration rolls this year without due process or new and arcane photo I.D. rules that can trip up even the most dedicated voter, state and county GOP election officials are seemingly seeking to discourage voter participation --- perhaps because three of the most competitive U.S. House races this year are in Indiana.

"I think this is all part of a nationwide effort of the Republican Party to suppress votes, because that's the only way for them to stay in power," says William Groth, an attorney filing a lawsuit challenging the voter I.D. law on behalf of the Indiana Democratic Party, a case now on appeal.

It is important that we familiarize ourselves with
Rethuglican ploys and shenanigans to tamper with
election processes that aim to throw elections to their favor. We must remain vigilant and aware and file a formal complaint with the fraud division of the secretary of states office. Follow thru with multiple complaints if need be and assure that action be taken
to curtail any election illegalities. This must be done on a national state by state basis. We can not let these issues slide especially while we are stuck in political minority party status

The Republican petition gathers then switch the Demo voters registration to Republican without their consent
or knowledge.

This scam is currently happening in CALIFORNIA -
be aware.

Read the details of this scam occurring in California,.. it will likely happen on a national basis. The results of this ploy are to disenfranchise voters and also make it easier for the Republicans to game the tabulation of the final vote,.. making switched votes seem more plausible.

Link. Read the comments attached to the article for more local details. If you see this ploy
being perpetrated you should report it to the Secretary of State - Fraud Reporting Division.

Contact info Calif. SOS Fraud Investigation Unit :

Fresno Area:
Tom Quiroz
(559) 445-6884

Sacramento Area:
Paul Rutledge
(916) 657-2177

Mark Loren
(916) 654-1845

Remain alert,.. this scam must be stopped,.. THIS WILL ENABLE THE REPUBLICANS TO GAME THE VOTE COUNTING RESULTS

A bogus election in Ohio
A bogus election run on Diebold EVM's
Diebold's executive offices are in Ohio
Corporate headquarters in Canton
The company founded in Ohio 1859
And Diebold can't run a bogus free election here ?
Diebold is totally incompetent,.. they should not be contracted to count the votes in Ohio or anywhere is the United States of America. Enough of this buffoonery
they are making a total mockery of the vote counting process and are bringing serious damage to our democracy.

These incapable outside vote counting contractors must be shit canned. Restore the responsibility to the municipal and state governments,.. the job of counting the vote should have never been outsourced to charlatans who do not take the job seriously.

HOW THE TRICK AND SWITCH WORKED WITH PROVISIONAL BALLOTS AT PCT 324, PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA.

WHAT BOGGLES THE MIND IS THAT IT’S SUCH A SIMPLE SCAM.

Maria, a 27- year-old Democrat, was the 435th voter on Election Day Nov 2nd, 2004. Maria ordered an early ballot from the Recorders Office. Like many Americans she procrastinated too long and misplaced her early ballot. To make sure her vote counted, she went to her precinct to vote. When Maria arrived at the precinct she was required to vote a Provisional ballot, and rightfully so. Maria then signed all documents necessary as per the request of the poll workers, put her vote in an envelope, signed the affidavit on the outside and left.

What Maria didn’t know was that she had become a victim of voter identity theft and disenfranchisement.

Right after she voted and left, the poll workers re-entered Maria's name on the Consecutive Number Register (CNR) as voter #444 and wrote "spoiled" next to her name on the CNR at position #435, indicating that she made a mistake and needed a replacement ballot – which absolutely was not the case according to Maria.

Then, if the wished, the poll workers' were in a position to turn Maria’s validly cast vote for Kerry into an ersatz spoiled ballot and then re-cast an illegal vote for Bush, alleging it to be Maria's "spoil replacement."

In any event, when Maria signed the “regular" Signature Roster, as instructed by the poll workers, she unknowingly rendered her Provisional ballot useless. If by accident it had been turned in, it would have been declared null and void. But a ckeck of the records revealed that it was never was turned in. Furthermore, the Recorder could not have accepted it, because her signature on the “regular” Signature Roster would have made it look like a felonious double vote. This was just one example of what happened to at least 22 electors at Pct. 324 on Election Day 2004, according to a painstaking citizen audit of all public records.

The major reason why it takes so long to count the provisional ballots after an election is that the county Recorder’s office has to first determine from the “regular” Signature Roster the names of voters who cast regular ballots and then enter these names into their computer data base before deciding which of the provisional ballots can be accepted. It should be noted that the Recorder uses only the signed affidavits off the provisional-ballot envelopes to decide who actually cast provisional ballots. That is, the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster serves no official purpose at all. Nevertheless, a citizen audit found 11 signatures on the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster made by persons whose names were not listed on the CNR, and there were 11 names (with signatures) on provisional ballots sent to the Recorder’s office that did not match any signature on any of the Signature Rosters, or any name printed by the poll workers on the CNR. The latter could well have been identical with the 11 provisional ballots determined by the Recorder to have been invalid – as, for example, they would have been if the signatures on the affidavits had been forged. (These anomalies constitute only a small part of the citizen-audit-based case for poll-worker fraud at Pct. 324 on Election Day 2004.)

By Arizona law, Maria should have been instructed by poll workers to sign the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster. The ‘regular” Signature Roster should be signed only by voters whose ballots are entered into the precinct optical scanner. However, there are insufficient checks and balances (outside of citizen audits) to determine if the law has been correctly followed. The CNR and precinct's Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance go to the Election Department, while both the “regular” and Provisional Ballot Signature Rosters go to the Recorder’s office. These two offices do not do cross comparisons these data!

At the end of the day, what really matters to any Election Department is the poll-worker-completed Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance, which documents the votes and is the only check and balance system available to the two major parties. Unfortunately, both parties have neglected this electoral accounting system, choosing NOT to remain vigilant, as history teaches us we must. The citizen audit of Pct. 324 found that the only way to reconcile the full body of the public record with the poll workers’ Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance required the conclusion that there were 11 felony double votes and that 39 ballots that should have been cast as provisionals were illegally fed into the optical scanner on Election Day 2004.

The Election Department counts on the bipartisanship of poll workers and therefore never audits the Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance if it is signed off on by all poll workers. (Accordingly, poll workers with nominal differences in party membership, but secretly sharing highly partisan sympathies, would be free to make mischief with high confidence of not being caught.) Historically, the Election Department does not even do simple things like counting if the number of spoiled ballots the poll workers claimed to have turned in or check to see if ALL the unused ballots are returned.

Just goes to show that we mustn't become myoptic by concentrating ONLY on EVMs... they're worse, because they leave no auditable trail... but there are plenty of ways of gaming paper ballots, too... a transparent election system must be combined with scrupulous citizen oversight of the process.

I'm a SoCal girl who was shocked by reading the Salon article --- I actually had no idea CA would make the list! So I wrote a lil post about it, asking what we could do, and Art (the writer) commented saying check out Brad Blog, among others.

So --- I'll be reading your posts about Cali closely ---
Would love to hear what your ideas are on what we concerned Cali peeps can do about this --